


Starlight

by Itsnotwren



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Platonic Relationships, Poe Dameron is a Good Friend, enemies to still kinda enemies but they understand each other, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23542192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itsnotwren/pseuds/Itsnotwren
Summary: The two of them were so similar when broken down to their basic foundations. Two pilots, trying to find purpose in a hopeless war they had been fighting since they were children. They were so similar, and that’s what made it hurt the most.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/First Order!reader, Poe Dameron/Reader
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Starlight

**Author's Note:**

> So I write literally one thing every two years and this quarantine has given me the extra time to write this year's single fic by me. (This was written out of boredom so Poe is probably super out of character, lo siento)

A series of incredibly unlikely, unfortunate events that caused the two rival pilots to be in the position they’re currently in. A massive explosion below them had drawn both of their attentions down and not on the sky. This split second lapse in judgement caused the best pilot in the Resistance and the First Order to make an amateur, ridiculous mistake. They hit each other. And they hit hard. Going different directions, their wings collided and completely shattered, immobilizing the both of them as they plummeted towards the surface of the planet.

Y/n's TIE bounced around until it was brought to a halt, knocking her around despite how tight she was wearing her seatbelt. Hypothetically, the X-wing could have landed somewhat decently if there was a clearing nearby. But since it was the most densely packed forest planet she’s ever seen. There was no clearing, but the crunching of his ship slamming into the ground and sliding for no less than 100 meters made a pretty decent one.

The TIE landed face down, darkness taking over the cockpit. She undid her seatbelt, ribcage slamming into the control console in front of her. She climbs on top of her chair as best as she can and wrestles with the hatch to get it open. Smoke fills her lungs the second the hatch cracks open, sending her into a fit of bloody coughs. A few ribs must have been broken in the landing. She throws her helmet off and sticks her head out, desperate to get a breath of fresh air, only to be met with the sight of the burning, scarred ground Dameron left in his wake.

His ship rested upside down on a pile of smoldering splinters which used to be trees. It was missing an entire wing, Y/n's TIE really did a number on it. The entire front of the X-wing was crunched in. Somehow the ship hadn't powered down from the crash, the engines were still running but they were in bad shape. While Y/n's was still trying to get her bearings, the engine caught on fire. Her knowledge of the anatomy of X-wings was limited, but she knew that it was dangerously close to the fuel line. Before she knew what she was doing, she threw herself onto the hard ground, and sprinted over to the X-wing.

Poe Dameron had been a thorn in her side for years, but Y/n would never be able to live with herself if she let him die pinned underneath an exploding X-wing when she could have stopped it.

She had her vibroblade in hand as she crouched down to what used to be the cockpit. The glass had been shattered in the crash, the metal mangled around Dameron, almost protecting him. In all the years they had flown opposite each other, she had never seen him face to face. He was on the verge of unconsciousness, arms splayed out above his head, blood running down his forehead under his cracked helmet, and groaning about something. She dropped to her stomach as she reached blindly for the seatbelt clasp. When she found it and unclicked it, he fell forward somewhat and started yelling and reaching down towards his legs.

They were pinned. Y/n glanced back to the fire at the back of the ship, it was growing larger every second she wasted. She extended her vibroblade so it was around the length of a lightsaber, and sliced the entire bottom half of metal off of the hull, careful to miss Dameron's leg and arms. Headfirst, he finally hit the ground. She worked quickly, reaching inside the cockpit and dragging him out by the back of his flight suit, despite the strain it was putting on her back and neck, screaming in pain from whiplash. She couldn't care less, she had to get the two of them away from the ship. The second his whole body was out from under the X-wing, she could tell why he was yelling so much. His leg was broken, badly. His right femur was bent at a disgusting angle, which made her grip falter, but never give. She wrapped her arm under his and around his shoulder as she dragged him away from the wreck.

They made good distance into the clearing when the X-wing erupted into a ball of fire that sent the two flying back. They both were blasted back a few feet, slamming onto their backs. They laid side by side, eyes on the sky, catching their breath and waiting for their ears to stop ringing. Poe turned his head first, wanting to see the face of his savior, only to see the figure of his greatest rival coughing her lungs out, body curling in on itself from pain. She looked up and locked eyes with him. A million emotions were running through Dameron's head. Fear, pain, and confusion most of all.

Y/n pulls herself onto shaky feet.

"Don't even think about going anywhere." She said, her voice was hoarse and weak, but Dameron knew it was an order. He knew better than to disobey, and it wasn't like he had anywhere to go. She made her way back to her wrecked TIE. Poe laid there, sprawled out on the ground, trying to remember where he was, what happened, he even forgot his name for a second which really freaked him out. How hard did he crash?

Before these questions overrun his mind with panic, his savior returned with a medkit. Poe twisted to the left and watched as she dug through it, trying to find something that could help his leg, painkillers, at least.

"You saved my life." He said, finally breaking the silence. She didn't respond. She extended a metal pole and folded some gauze.

"Lie down." Poe did as she said. She offered the folded gauze to him. "I'm setting your leg. Bite down on this." He bit down on the gauze and grabbed the fabric at his hips as hard as he could. She took hold of his thigh and realigned the bone into place in two hard pushes. Dameron screamed into the gauze. She laid it down gently and tied it to the metal rod, acting as a makeshift splint. The aftershocks of pain had tears rolling down the side of Dameron's face.

"Ow." Poe said with a sniffle, which earned a scoff from Y/n. She looked down at her hands, bloodied from the broken glass she laid down in when she pulled Dameron out of his ship. She pulled out some wipes and tweezers and started trying to pull the minuscule glass shards out of her palms.

"Wait," Dameron said as he pushed himself into a sitting position, not daring to move his bad leg. "Let me." He said as he reached his hands out. Y/n shook her head.

"Don't worry about it." She said. Apparently that wasn't the right answer.

"You saved my life and fixed my leg. It's the least I can do." He said. She didn't know what to do. He took her hesitation as a yes. He slowly took the tweezers from her shaking hands. He held her hand, palm up, and went to work, pulling out glass and throwing them into the grass. Nobody had touched her so carefully in her life. He had picked out most of the glass and had her hands wrapped in minutes.

They sat in an uncomfortable silence, still in shock about the crash. Poe started at Y/n, but she refused to meet his gaze. It was all too much for Poe.

"It's nice to finally meet you. It's almost weird to finally have a face to the name." He said. He despises small talk, but he needed something. She always wore a helmet, nobody aside from Hux and her pilots knew what she looked like. Dameron, on the other hand, had his face plastered practically everywhere whether it be on wanted lists or Resistance recruitment posters Y/n had shamefully stared at for longer than she should. He was a handsome man, after all. She may be First Order but, hell, she isn’t blind.

"How long until the Resistance will come to pick you up?" She asked, completely disregarding his greeting. Poe thought about it for a second.

"Um, probably a few days. It usually takes a while to get the order to go out to look for someone. But I could just comm them if everything personal I had didn’t get destroyed." He said, just happy to have something to talk about. "What about you?" Y/n just shook her head.

"I sent out a distress signal as I was going down. With any luck it was picked up before the crash, but if my signal went cold, they'll think I'm dead. They wouldn't waste their time." She said completely monotone, sounding like a depressed droid. She threw her blaster at the ground in front of him. "Here, if you want to kill me at any point, you're welcome to. It's better than being held prisoner." Poe's head snapped up. He threw the blaster back to her.

"If you think I'm killing you after everything you've done," Poe couldn't think of a way to finish his statement, but Y/n was already walking away, towards her busted TIE. Poe looked on at the blaster resting on the ground. He knew things were bad from what Finn had told him, but does their greatest pilot really value her life that little? She returned with a survival bag, pulling out blankets and a short cylinder with a switch on one side. The sun was setting and the air was growing cold. Planets with woodland biomes tended to be freezing at night. Poe threw a blanket over his lap as she leaned forward and flipped the switch, the cylinder setting on fire before sitting next to Poe, a comfortable distance away. The First Order has a standard issue portable fireplace? Poe had to admit that was pretty cool.

"So you're Captain Y/n, right? The one in charge of the First Order TIEs?" He asked.

"I am." She said, her lack of detail was really getting to Poe.

"Why the hell are you helping me?" He asked. Y/n shrugged.

"I don't know. I saw your engine catch on fire, and I just had to get you out of there. Just pilots' camaraderie, or something like that." She said. "Technically I'm not even supposed to be talking to you." This caught Poe's interest.

"You aren't even allowed to talk to Resistance members?" Y/n shook her head with a smirk. Poe felt a twinge of pride. She's opening up.

"The higher ups are terrified of us defecting. So they think forbidding us contact with them will do something." She said with a shrug.

"So why are you talking to me? We've been...trying to kill each other for years." He had a point, and he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been targeting the Captain every time he saw her in the sky.

"If Hux is the one giving orders to not interact with people, I'm not going to listen to it." This earned a small laugh from Poe, making Y/n smile herself.

"Well it's good to know people on your side don't listen to him either." They had their moment of amusement, and they fell back into silence.

“He’s a fine leader, he’s just...strange. Here,” she says as she pulls out her comm link and throws it into his lap. “Tell your Resistance friends to pick you up. Tell them I’m dead if they ask.” She stares into the artificial flame, illuminating the gentle planes of her face in a brilliant orange, the contrast against the pastel purple sky enough to make Poe’s eyes hurt. He averts his eyes to the small chrome comm link in his hands, taking it in. The comm link of the enemy. He thinks for just a moment. Well, maybe just a confused friend. He punched the code in for Snap, his was the only one he remembered.

“Hey Snap, you better not be in the middle of my funeral.” He lifts his hand from the button and waits for a response. After a tense minute, the link opens up with Snap’s laughter, which sounded like music to Poe’s ears.

“Goddamn it, we were celebrating never having to see you again!” Poe smiled and tilted his head towards the sky.

“It’s going to take a lot more than getting t-boned by a TIE to take me out. Come on, you know that.” Y/n cracked a smirk, earning a confused look from Poe. She just shook her head and raised her hand to tell him not to worry about it. 

“For real, though, where’d you land? We’ll come pick you up in the morning.” Snap asked, acting shockingly nonchalant about everything.

“Not far from the battle site. Just look down and you’ll find the burning pieces of what’s left of my baby and I won’t be too far.” He turned around to look at the wreckage. It actually wasn’t burning anymore, that was a plus.

“You got it, brother. I’ll see you soon.”

“Until then, man.” He turned off the comm and handed it back to it's owner, who quickly put it in her pocket. “Are you gonna comm your friends?” He asked.

“Distress signal.” She said curtly.

“But you said it might not have gone through.” Poe pointed out.

“It’s a personal comm, anyone not a high ranking officer isn’t allowed to have one.” She said, taking Poe aback again. First she actively disobeys orders from her General, then seems to break rules left and right. How did he end up with the most rebellious pilot who happens to have the biggest stick up her ass he’s ever seen. Poe taps his knee absentmindedly, trying to think of a new conversation topic.

“So, where are you from?” He asks.

“Can you stop asking questions I’m not supposed to answer? And why haven’t you shot me yet? I thought we were enemies.” She wanted nothing more than to convince herself that the man in front of her was a bad person, but it was a lot more difficult now that they were face to face.

“I’m not shooting you so drop it. Why did you pull me out of my X-wing? I thought we were enemies.” He countered. Poe always struggled when it came to believing the people in the First Order were his enemies, especially after meeting Finn. The Order takes children, infants, and teaches them nothing but hatred. They fight and die for a cause they didn’t choose.

“You were the one who knocked me out of the sky. You won. I lost, so you deserved to live. And if you don’t kill me the First Order will just do your job for you when I get back.” Her stomach dropped immediately. She shouldn’t have brought up reconditioning. Dameron’s bleeding heart wouldn’t take it well.

“They’ll kill you because you made a mistake?” He asks, shifting closer to her before wincing at the pain shooting up his leg at the movement. He didn’t care, he was going to get to the bottom of this woman and the horrible organization she works for if it kills him.

“I’ll be sent to reconditioning, which might as well be a fate worse than death. I’m a higher ranking officer, people look up to me, mistakes are unacceptable no matter the context.”

“I make mistakes all the time and nobody looks down on me because of it. I learn from them and move on. You can’t beat yourself over something natural. Mistakes are what make you human.”

“Tell that to the general. I’m not a human, I’m a pilot.” She said, rolling her eyes. “One measly piece in the never ending storm that is the First Order.” She said, clearly mocking something she must have heard a thousand times before.

“You’re more than that. And the arms of the Resistance will always be open if you don’t want to be part of the storm anymore.”

“I’ll take the reconditioning.”

“You’d rather a fate worse than death over joining people who just want to make things peaceful?”

“All the Resistance does is fight a never ending, purposeless war that only brings death and destruction to everyone, whether they’re involved or not.” And here come the politics. Poe was expecting this argument much sooner.

“What part of fighting for peace do you not get?”

“Take the Death Star. A horrific war machine that was used by the most evil, despicable people in history. The Rebellion took out two of them, killed the Emperor, and still couldn’t establish the peace they had been preaching when all was said and done. The Empire became the First Order and the Rebellion became the Resistance. War evolves. It doesn’t end. And there won’t be any winners. Both of us will be long dead before there will be any semblance of peace.”

The two were left in silence. They both stared into the fire as if it held the answers they were looking for. Poe’s chest felt impossibly tight. He’s had so many political arguments with countless Senators and First Order prisoners and he had never gotten this worked up before. The two of them were so similar when broken down to their basic foundations. Two pilots, trying to find purpose in a hopeless war they had been fighting since they were children. They were so similar, and that’s what made it hurt the most.

“So you’d rather fight for the evil, despicable people.”

“It’s better than betting my life on an unachievable dream.”

“It isn’t unachievable. You’re lying to yourself if you say you wouldn’t want to live a life without a war!” Poe was so beyond pissed at this point. His dark eyes stormed with something dangerous. If they were so similar, why couldn’t she just see the world like he did? He knew it would never happen, but it would save herself and everyone around her so much pain.

“I don’t know what a life without war is because of you and your Resistance.” She said, leaning closer for emphasis. They stared into each other’s eyes with such genuine frustration, she was half expecting Poe to just hit her across the face then and there. Her commander had done it enough times when she spoke out of line for her to be used to it.

It could have been a trick of the light, but she could have sworn his face softened for just a second before he stared aimlessly at his hands.

“Yeah, feeling’s mutual.” He said. Y/n felt a pang in her chest. Guilt. Her heart sped up as she tried to think of something to say to fix the mess she’d made.

Why was she even arguing with him? She wasn’t going to change his mind and vice versa, and all it’s really doing is stressing the both of them out when they were already in a bad enough situation. The silence stretched for minutes, the tense breathing of the two pilots and crackling of the fire almost lulling the two to sleep. Arguing was exhausting, and it was finally hitting them. “Arda, by the way.” Poe’s head snapped up, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. “You asked where I was from earlier. According to my record I’m from Arda II.” Y/n's voice dropped to a whisper by the end of her sentence, gaging his reaction. This wasn’t the time.

“You’re kidding.” He said. She shook her head as his face lit up. He perked up awfully quickly, which took her a bit off guard. He was just happy there was finally something to talk about that didn’t make him want to scream and pull his hair out. “I’m from Yavin, Arda’s my sister system.” A small smile made its way across her face. Stars, she’s pretty when she smiles, he thought to himself. “Oh,” Poe snapped his finger and pointed at her. “Is that why your callsign is Y/n?”

“Our callsigns are assigned, we don’t get to pick them.”

“Do you know why you’re called that?” Another shake of the head.

“Do you know anything about Arda’s history?”

“Nothing whatsoever.” Poe bit his lip and nodded his head and clapped.

“Got it, I’m giving you a history lesson then. Okay, Yavin IV and Arda II are only a parsec and a half away when the orbits line up, so the stars we see are essentially the same when we’re close together. One of the constellations we share is called ‘Y/n’. Because of how close our planets are physically, the people who lived on them were really close allies, even though the rest of their systems absolutely hated each other. I think it was 300 years ago or so, but a war broke out between the two systems, and all contact got cut off between Yavin IV and Arda II because there were much bigger planets calling the shots then.”

Sounds awfully familiar.

“So the people of both planets were pissed. Families got split up because of it, there were riots, it was just a mess. But the few weeks everyone would come together, was the weeks both planets could see ‘Y/n’. It’s a huge holiday now. I remember as a kid, looking up at those twelve stars that made up the constellation, but the brightest thing in the sky was always Arda II, just to the right.”

Dameron hesitated, his eyes glowed in the starlight, longing to be transported back home just to see the familiar sky. “I had a point, what was my point? Oh, right. The reason 'Y/n' was so important to us was because the Yavin and Arda systems followed the same religion, and Y/n was our goddess of the sky.” She was stunned. It had to be a coincidence, there was no way that much thought was put into her callsign.

“I...I had no idea. It was always just a name to me. I didn’t realize there was any meaning to it.”

“Let me tell you, the amount of disappointment was immeasurable when I learned you didn’t have wings or a golden crown that floated behind your head.” They both laughed but Y/n still needed time to take all this in. She never knew anything about her home planet and this extremely handsome stranger she’s supposed to despise just dumped this all on her and indirectly called her a goddess. “How do you not know anything about where you came from?”

“I was shipped out to the First Order when I was so young I don’t remember any of it.” It felt strange to talk about Arda in such an affectionate way, because it was never truly home to her. The cold metal of the stations she grew up on was the closest thing she had to home. Even that didn’t sound quite right.

“How old were you?” Maker, he isn’t going to like this, she thought. Resistance fighters tend to act with their hearts rather than their head. And the morality of the First Order’s actions were certainly questionable when it comes to recruitment.

“I think I was three. But,” She shrugged her shoulders. “It is what it is.” Poe looked like he was going to throw up.

“That isn’t right.” His shoulders drop. “I really hope you realize how fucked up that is because if you don’t I think I’m going to scream or cry or something really overdramatic that you don’t want to see.” He wanted it to come off as funny, but he was dead serious. He was really ready to snap.

“I know. I know it isn’t right, but it’s everything I’ve ever known.” She said, mentally cursing herself out at her voice cracking at the last word. As far as Poe was concerned, this was the most important thing Y/n had said all night. This is what he was looking for. They were brought up on their ideals and believed in them so much that nobody’s minds were going to be changed by yelling at each other for what felt like hours. He just wanted honesty. When she looked up at him, there were tears glistening in her y/e/c eyes. “We finally agree on something.” She whispered. Poe let out a shaky breath, placing his hand over hers.

“Took long enough, huh?”

“Yeah, really.” She yawned before she could say more. “I don’t know about you but I’m absolutely exhausted from arguing the whole night.”

“Oh gods, believe me I’m about to pass out right now. I’ll take first watch, if I fall asleep now there’s no way I’ll be able to get up again. Here.” He says as he offers her the blanket he had been wearing. “I would have offered earlier but I didn’t realize it was the only one and you were busy talking about how much you hate me. Figured it was a bad time.” She took the blanket and laid down. She couldn’t tell if it was warm from the fire or him, but she appreciated it nonetheless.

“It’s the war I hate, not you.”

“I’ll take what I can get.” Poe leaned back on his hands and smirked down at her. With that one simple movement, she finally learned what butterflies felt like. 

"Sweet dreams, starlight."


End file.
